Witkrans takes part in Worldwide Culture Swop

My neighbor (and life and farm inspiration) told me about a cultural swop run by Little Red Farm.  The exchange aims to share information with a group of other families around the world  about the country in which we live. They get a feel for our country and culture, and we get a feel for theirs.  Their are 5 families in each group and we each make up a parcel of bits and pieces that we have chosen to give a good overview of what it is like to live where your family comes from.

The families in our group are from:

• Arizona
• Alaska
• Bristol, UK
• Malaysia

So in our June/July holidays we are going to collect various South African things to include in our parcels.   Matthew and Emma are already spending the days thinking of things to include in their packages and collecting various things on the farm.

If only…

……there were enough hours in the day to include blogging, I could tell you things about picking grapes, stomping wine, having all our wine knocked over by the gardener who drove a car into our vat, getting more grapes, getting trapped up at Fynbos Retreat in a recent fire, organising a a really special music workshop at Bodhi Khaya, holidays in Knysna, tree swinging, spending time with my special U.K mom and two brothers, batering for more grapes and starting to stomp again, children ‘swimming’ in tank with grapes, bottling our wine, drinking our wine, two new baby chickens, Wilbur in the vegetable garden and breaking out most mornings with the Great Dane chasing him around the farm, water leaks…………but right now I need to go and prepare a dry place for the Stranveld hikers that will be arriving shortly for tea and hot cross buns after their Easter hike and then later today I get to turn into the Easter bunny and prepare for excited children tomorrow

Wishing you all a blessed Easter!

Wilbur the pig

 

Pappa pig, Boldrick

We have a standing arrangement with our neighbors where we keep, Boldrick the boy pig and our neighbors have the girl pig – get it?  So Boldrick goes to visit every so often to do you know what and then we get one of his off-spring which goes directly to the butcher and comes back just like you would buy pork chops from the shops.  The idea is that we don’t get to know the pig/ talk to the pig or bond with the pig in any way.  We get food from Coffee on the Rocks – if you have been there, you will know just how well our pigs eat from the left-overs from this restaurant.  Once a week, wife gets to go and pick up a huge black bucket and get covered in slop – the pigs love it and we feel that at least we know our pigs have had a wonderful life, free ranging above the vineyards and eating really good food (how many of you can say that about the meat you eat?)

We recently got another one of Boldricks off-spring and it was put in the pig area with Boldrick not to be looked at and the children were told in no uncertain terms NOT to give this pig a name.  Matthew is now old enough to understand where meat comes from, but Emma will become a vegetarian if she knows at this stage, so as far as she is concerned, the pig is here on holiday for some time.

In Matthews class they are reading ‘Charlotte’s Web’ where the little cute runt, Wilbur becomes a family pet and saved from being eaten.  So Matthew puts his hand up during the reading session at school and promptly announces that ‘we have a pig we are going to eat in two months time’ – once the teacher had recovered from her shock she asked if we could bring the pig into the class as most of the children had never seen a pig, I was begged – and being a Privett I struggle to say No to anyone!

So I took ‘no name brand’ into school today for show and tell and all the children came up and stroked her and then the teacher very ‘kindly’ let them ask me questions

Of course the first question is by a Grade 3 girl who glares me in the eye and says ‘Why are you going to murder this cute piggie?’ So I explain, (or more like fumble) that we like bacon and pork chops blah blah and get asked many other interesting questions and as I leave with ‘no name brand’ they all shout ‘Goodbye Wilbur!’ ………………………………………… So now pig is named and I have bonded with the cute fellow as I held him…………….what useless farmers we are!

Free range fynbos bunnies

Baboons have been raiding our chicken hok through the rabbits cage and setting the rabbits free - so we now have two free range rabbits on the farm. Here is a trap set with food and Sean and kids are waiting for the rabbits

One Rabbit at the trap!

Two rabbits at trap and Matthew starting to get bored with all this waiting....

The patient ones waiting....

Look at the look on his face and Emma's body language - after almost an hour of waiting the rabbits just hopped out the side of the crate as Sean pulled on the trap!

There is now an offer of R10 per rabbit up for grabs for kids – Sean and I enjoy plenty of laughs in the evenings now as we see rabbits hopping through the fynbos with crazy kids chasing behind!

Leopard sightings in our valley

What an amazing valley we live in. Not only are we surrounded by remarkable diversity of fynbos with all the beautiful flowers that brighten up the landscape throughout the year, but we also regularly encounter bushbuck, greysbok, hear the sound of fish eagles overhead and now it has been confirmed that there are at least two leopard for whom our valley forms part of their range.

These photo’s were taken by camara traps in mid December and again earlier this month!

Click here to read more  about the leopard from our neighbour, Flower Valley.

 

The great egg yolk debate response

Following my last post about the superior quality of Witkrans’ eggs, we got the following response from Farm 215:

‘Your eggs look great and I assume that with all the hard work you have put in this year, they will have greatly improved.   You still have a way to go though looking at your eggyoke-eggwhite-spread-ratio of 1 on 4 instead of the ultimate ideal as realised by the farm 215 eggs, 1 on 2. Your eggwhite is all over the plate !   I also think you should cut down on the amount of chillies you feed your eggs, the eggyolk is a bit on the red side.   If you want I can train one or two of your chicken at no charge. Just bring them over, I let them run with my chicken who can explain your chicken what exactly to eat in the fynbos.’

Witkrans has decided that this calls for an ‘Egg-a-thon’ Competition in the Uilkraalvallei – watch this space!

The great egg yolk debate

I was informed at a party by Whale Song Lodge (whom we supply the majority of our eggs to) that Farm 215′s eggs have a nicer yellower egg yolk than ours.

We could not quite believe that someone could have better eggs than us and we set out on a secret mission to ask Maarten various questions about what he feeds his eggs, how long they free range etc.  Matt, the chicken farmer and I did various random visits to Farm 215′s chickens but could not see much difference.

We decided to increase the greens in their food and let them free range in the garden every afternoon.  They also get the occasional bowl of Pronutro on the trampoline from the children.

On a recent Lomond wine tasting trip at Farm 215 Maarten came and surprised me with a box of his Golden delicious eggs! He had recently been informed of Witkrans’ sly chicken snooping

Next morning I took one egg from Witkrans and one from Farm 215 and guess what…………………..